>>23692713I got online in the fall of 1996. Back then, it was more of what you imagine the internet should be. I could go on IRC
dal.net and instantly find a girl (yes, a real woman) who was local and chat her up and go on a date. Met a few women IRL that way and me and my buddy had a channel on IRC where we basically met this NJ girls from #Chatzone or #Funfactory and chatted them up and met up with them at the mall.
You could play MUDs (I used to play one called Illusia) for free and they all had great user communities. You could call people fag and people laughed it off. Forums were all simple bulletin boards with no moderation or registration required...you had to verify who people were by their IP address, not user names.
Gaming websites were real back in the 90s too. You had dinky little gaming sites run by some fat, solitary nerd that actually knew his shit and up until the 2000s, most "nerd culture" sites were staffed by actual nerds who did it for the love of it. Like Zophar's Domain housing all the new emulators, or Andrew Vestahl's Official Unofficial Squaresoft page.
The real problem is, the internet got popular and mainstream by 99, and that "eternal september" became real. Corporations smelled money, and turned the web into a shopping mall full of ads, cookies, and mandatory logins.
I'd love to go back to the 90s web.
